Short TakesM O V I E STHE RULES OF ATTRACTIONDirected by Roger Avary From a novel by the world's oldest bad boy, Bret Easton Ellis, comes this frenetically chic look at a daisy chain of collegiate craving. The cafeteria girl (Kate Bosworth) loves the scheming stud (James Van Der Beek), who loves the soulful virgin (Shannyn Sossamon), who loves the smug film student (Kip Pardue), while a gorgeous bisexual (Ian Somerhalder) is ready to have them all. Sex, drugs and rack 'n' ruin; pretty people doing nasty things to one another...honestly, what more could you want in a movie? BY RICHARD CORLISS

M U S I CAMERICAN IDOL GREATEST MOMENTSVarious Artists Idol grand dame Kelly Clarkson can belt it out, and her hit single, A Moment Like This, is one of the best Kodak jingles ever to masquerade as a pop song. Tamyra Gray's take on A House Is Not a Home is respectable, but the rest of the singers on this instant piece of pop nostalgia really do deserve the withering insults to which they were subjected. The song selection (lots of Stevie Wonder) is repetitive, and the performances have the spooky, hyperemotive quality of a Six Flags revue. That trait may come in handy in the performers' inevitable search for future employment. BY JOSH TYRANGIEL

SIMPLY NATURALCarla Cook She isn't a dewy blond or a postadolescent waif, so Carla Cook would seem to be facing a rocky path across the current jazz terrain. But she can sing  really sing. Situating her gospel-tinted voice in a propulsive rhythmic groove, she proceeds to bend the blues, rehabilitate some standards (by Simon and Garfunkel as well as by Duke Ellington) and scamper through a couple of her own intriguing compositions. Simply Natural may fall an inch short of her spectacular last CD, Dem Bones, but that's no insult. Cook can cook. BY DANIEL OKRENT

T E L E V I S I O NBANG BANG YOU'RE DEADShowtime, Oct. 13, 8:00 p.m. E.T. One day Trevor Adams (Ben Foster) brings a bomb to high school. The weapon doesn't go off; it's a dummy. But when a drama teacher (Tom Cavanagh) casts Trevor in a play about a school shooting, the campus explodes into paranoia, pushing Trevor to the brink of real violence. Bang Bang is too speech-heavy, and for a movie about the danger of stereotypes, it's rife with them: meathead jocks, insensitive parents, earnest teachers. But Foster makes Trevor searingly real, a bright, eyes-averted loner who so badly wants you to think he doesn't care that you know he does. This is a flawed but unignorable trip into the terrified heart of zero-tolerance America. BY JAMES PONIEWOZIK

T H E A T E RLITTLE HAM There's a lot that's dated and silly in this off-Broadway musical based on a Langston Hughes play about gangsters in 1930s Harlem. But what's dated and delightful is Judd Woldin's effortlessly tuneful jazz score, the best of its kind in years. BY RICHARD ZOGLIN